Thought for the Day

[Duke of Buckingham]

My Own Life
Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
By OLIVER SACKSFEB. 19, 2015

A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it “My Own Life.”

“I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,” he wrote. “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person ...

... On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. ...

... This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands. ...

... Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

Read more on http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/op...al-cancer.html

[Duke of Buckingham]

"Sam Houston: You will remember this battle! Each minute! Each second! Until the day that you die! But that is for tomorrow, gentlemen. For today, Remember The Alamo!"
The Alamo

[Duke of Buckingham]

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”

― Walter Cronkite


“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

― Margaret Mead


“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

― Mark Twain


“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook


“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

― C.S. Lewis

[Duke of Buckingham]

“That was one of the saddest things about people--their most important thoughts and feelings often went unspoken and barely understood.”

― Alexandra Adornetto, Halo

[Duke of Buckingham]

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

― Sophia Loren


“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

― Eve Ensler, I am an Emotional Creature

[Duke of Buckingham]

[Duke of Buckingham]

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

Leo Tolstoy

[Duke of Buckingham]

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.


Leo Tolstoy

[Duke of Buckingham]

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Charles R. Swindoll quotes (American Writer and Clergyman, b.1934)

[Duke of Buckingham]

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Walt Disney


You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.

Ted Turner


The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit.

Morgan Freeman